


Sticking Things In All the Wrong Places

by the_random_writer



Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: Bad Flirting, Domestic Disputes, IKEA Furniture, M/M, Minor Injuries, Police, Snark, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 22:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15616056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_random_writer/pseuds/the_random_writer
Summary: When Ty and Zane are involved, even the simplest of domestic tasks has a way of spiralling out of control...





	Sticking Things In All the Wrong Places

Ty pulled back slightly, took a deep breath, braced his foot against the wall, then pushed as firmly as he could.

Zane winced and jerked away. "Easy, easy," he said. "This isn't a brute strength problem, doll. You can't just force it in."

"Not my fault the stupid thing's decided it doesn't wanna fit."

"Are you sure you're putting it in the right place?" Zane asked as tactfully as he could. Ty was already angry enough—saying anything remotely reproving would only add more fuel to the flames.

"Garrett, this is the _only_ goddamn hole I can see that takes something this size and shape," Ty snapped. "There's literally nowhere else I can put it."

"Okay, okay, don't get your panties in such a twist. Gimme a minute, lemme figure this out."

Ty huffed and pushed again.

"Okay, stop!" Zane shouted. "It's fine," he quickly added, seeing the worried look on Ty's face. "You didn't hurt me. But something's digging into my bladder. You keep pushing towards me like that, I'll end up pissing all over the floor."

Ty pushed again, this time more slowly. "Don't understand what the hell I'm doing wrong," he muttered. "Never had this problem before. Why the fuck won't the stupid thing fit?"

"Maybe it needs a more delicate touch. Don't just ram it straight in. Try turning it slowly while you push, or wiggling it from side to side."

Ty shook his head. "Tried that already." He turned to grab a small, plastic bottle. "Think it just needs some more lube."

"You've already used a crapload of lube. You use anymore, you're gonna turn the bedroom floor into a goddamn slip-n-slide."

"It's not moving, Garrett. The damn thing's jammed!"

Zane sighed, accepting his fate. "Okay, then let's not waste any more time. Slowly pull it all the way out, we'll check out the pictures in the guide, make sure we're doing this right. Once we're ready, we'll give it another try."

Ty nodded, braced again and pulled.

And pulled again.

And pulled some more.

Nothing happened.

"Now the damn thing won't come out," Ty said, eyes going wide in alarm. "It's totally stuck."

This wasn't good.

Zane winced again and shifted slightly, spreading his knees, trying to distribute the cumbersome weight. "You must have put it in the wrong way," he said. "I've done this before, several times, and I'm pretty sure it shouldn't take this much effort."

"When the fuck have you ever done this before?" Ty wanted to know. "Cus it sure as shit wasn't with me. Think I'd remember something that involved you spending that much time on your knees."

"With one of the guys I knew in Miami. He tried doing it all on his own. Called me four hours later in tears, offering me money to help him finish."

"Good to know it's not just me." Ty scrunched his face in confusion. "But if you've done this before, why the fuck am I at this end of the deal? Why aren't _you_ the one doing the pushing and screwing while I hold us up from below?"

"Cus you said you wanted to do the pushing and screwing, remember?" Zane shot back, almost adding a snarky comment about this being another example of Ty not really bottoming well…

"Didn't know it was gonna be this tricky," Ty grumbled. "Thought it would be as easy as the one we did the other night, thirty minutes, line it all up, shove it together, wham bam, all finished and done."

"It _should_ be as easy as the one we did the other night. No idea why this one's giving you so much trouble." Zane had a shocking thought. "You _did_ read the instructions, didn't you?"

"See, there's the thing…"

"Jesus, Meow Mix," Zane groaned. "I swear, one of these days, you're gonna be the death of me."

"The instructions were in Spanish, Zane," Ty almost shouted. "Case you hadn't noticed, the only Spanish words I know are _hola_ , _adios_ and _cerveza_."

Still holding up the load with one hand, Zane stretched out as far as he could, reaching for the how-to manual. He snagged it and gathered it in, read the cover, then flipped it over. " _One_ side's in Spanish," he said, holding the manual up to Ty's face. "The other side's in goddamn English."

Ty grabbed the manual to scan the text. "I didn't see that," he stiffly said.

"Obviously."

As Ty skimmed through the instructions, his petulance gradually faded away. "Okay, so it looks like I'm putting it in the wrong place," he admitted. "It should go in this much deeper hole way down near the bottom."

"Uh huh."

"So, how the fuck do we get it out?"

Zane grunted, feeling the strain. His arms were sore from holding such a heavy weight, and all the kneeling was killing his knees. "How about you ease everything back into an upright position, let me scoot out and take a quick look?"

Ty stood up and leaned over to pull the partially-assembled, Ikea dresser back onto all four feet.

Zane, who'd spent the last twenty minutes holding the dresser up from the other side, sighed in relief and flexed his arms. He slid out from behind the unit, then leaned in to examine the soft-close drawer mechanism Ty had been trying to build. Incorrectly, as it turned out. He peered at the offending dowel, jammed halfway into a pre-drilled hole in the dresser's side, grabbed it and gave it a tug.

It didn't move.

Ty was right—it was jammed in good.

Zane sat back on his heels. "We can fix this," he said, mostly to himself. "Just need to think it through."

"You do that," Ty advised, wandering out of the room. "I'm gonna go get something to drink, find out how to call someone a fucking asshole in Swedish."

Zane frowned as he flipped through the guide. This could be a 'game over' problem. Not only was the errant dowel supposed to go in another slot, another, slightly smaller piece was supposed to go in the hole it was using. If they couldn't get the wrong part out, then push the right part in, they wouldn't be able to finish building the dresser.

"Your own goddamn fault, Garrett," Zane muttered to himself. "Should've known better than to let Grady anywhere near it. Man thinks following numbered instructions's practically a hanging offense."

Pliers. He needed pliers.

"Hey, Ty!" Zane shouted out into the hall.

"What?" came Ty's hollered response from downstairs.

"Can you bring me the pliers? The clamping pair we keep in the drawer? The ones with the yellow plastic handles?"

Ty appeared a minute later, the pliers in question in hand. He handed them over.

Zane fastened the pliers' jaws around the jutting end of the dowel, tensed and pulled.

Nothing happened—the dowel didn't budge.

He took a deep breath, squeezed harder and pulled again. Slowly but surely, the dowel started to move. With a pop, it sprang free.

The sudden movement caught Zane off guard. He lost his balance and stumbled back, right into Ty standing behind him, knocking the ex-marine clean off his feet. Ty went airborne—full-on ass over tit—smacked the side of his head on the edge of the door and landed with a bone-crunching thud.

Zane followed him down, hands flailing, searching for purchase like a cat going into a bath. His ass slammed into the hardwood floor, but by some stroke of luck, his skull found the perfect cushion—the soft spot between Ty's spread-eagled legs.

Ty yelped in pain. "Jesus, my balls!" he cried, roughly pushing Zane off and rolling over to curl up in the fetal position. He groaned and cupped his battered jewels.

Zane lay on the floor, out of breath, winded but not quite seeing stars. Eventually, he managed to say, "The next time we need a new dresser, we're going to that fancy place a few blocks over, buying one that's already built. I don't care how much the fucking thing costs."

Still groaning, Ty rolled over and pushed himself on to his knees. "Pretty-boy Reynolds is right," he muttered. "Ikea _definitely_ means 'fuck you' in Swedish." He reached up to gingerly touch the side of his head, wincing as he found something sore.

"You okay?" Zane asked, searching for signs of blood. "Here, lemme see." He pulled Ty's hand away from his skull, whistling as he saw the bump. "Should probably get some ice on that."

"What about you? Anything hurt?"

Zane shook his head. "Had the wind knocked out of me, but your balls made an excellent cushion." He stood up, and held out a hand.

"You better kiss them better for me," Ty warned, accepting Zane's help to push to his feet. He winced again and cradled his crotch. "Hurt more than my goddamn head."

"I'll take care of your testicles later. For now, let's get the peas out of the freezer, take care of the bump in your skull."

"What do we do with the dresser?" Ty asked, flapping a hand at the bags and pieces strewn around the bedroom floor.

"Leave it for now," Zane replied. "I'll finish building it tomorrow." _After_ he'd laid out and labelled the parts, and read the instruction booklet from front to back. If necessary, in both English _and_ Spanish.

Ty snorted. "You can finish it on your own. I'm not touching the fucking thing, unless you need me to shoot it up or set it on fire."

"S'okay, doll. Probably better if you stay out of the way." Zane regretted the words almost as soon as they were out of his mouth.

"The ever-loving _fuck_ does that mean?!"

"It means, when it comes to furniture assembly, you don't exactly have the most sensible approach."

"And what the fuck are you, the Mister fucking Spock of Ikea?"

Zane was about to point out that Spock was logical, not sensible, until he realized it was more or less the same thing. And even if it wasn't, Ty wouldn't care. "Least I know how to read a fucking instruction manual," Zane retorted. "I don't just go nailing random pieces of shit together based on how my waters are feeling."

"Not my fault you need to do a forensic audit of all the instructions before you'll even pick up a screw."

"Better that than jumping in and finding out you have a missing part when the job's seventy-five percent done."

"Lone Star, I'm all for preparing, but you won't lift so much as a _finger_ until you've sorted the pieces by size and function into separate plastic tubs. Even you have to admit that's taking prepwork a bit too far."

"Not sure I'm willing to take that type of criticism from a man who once spent a whole afternoon printing out perfectly matching, colour-coded labels for all the food storage containers in the kitchen cupboard."

That was a snippy comment too far for Ty. "It makes the ingredients easy to find! Not my fault I can't tell the difference between caster sugar and salt just by goddamn looking at it."

Zane shuddered, remembering the Frankenstein Sponge. Not an experience his taste buds or stomach ever cared to repeat. "Maybe if you'd taken the same care with the furniture pieces as you took with those labels, you wouldn't have spent the last thirty minutes trying to shove something in the wrong hole."

"It doesn't help that all the pieces look the goddamn same," Ty protested. He leaned over to pick up two dowels, one slightly longer and thinner than the other. "Look at this. How the hell am I supposed to tell these fucking things apart?"

Zane grabbed the manual from the floor. "See this diagram here?" he said, tapping on a red-bordered box right at the end of the page. "See how they've already thought of that, helpfully provided some _actual-size_ drawings of all the pieces that look the same, drawn a red line through two of them to make it _abundantly_ clear to anyone with half a brain which pieces you shouldn’t use?"

"Like I said, I didn't see that!"

"Cus you didn't even fucking look!"

Ty held up his hands. "You know what? I'm done with this. Fuck you, fuck your underwear, fuck my socks, fuck this house, fuck this room, fuck those dowels, fuck the pliers, fuck Sweden, fuck Ikea and fuck this fucking piece-of-shit fucking dresser." His mouth set in a peevish line, he gave the dresser a vicious kick.

The dresser wobbled, almost recovered, then slowly toppled onto the floor, gouging a massive scar in the wall as it went. It landed with an almighty thud, something creaked, one of the legs started to droop, then fell off.

Ty had the decency to look embarrassed. "I probably shouldn't have done that," he said. He moved to pick the dresser up.

"Leave it," Zane ordered. "You touch it again, you'll just make it worse. Go sit on the couch, take care of the bump on your head."

For once, Ty didn't protest.

The doorbell binged.

Ty swore under his breath. "That better not be the Mormons again."

"If it is, the only thing that'll stop me from slamming the goddamn door in their faces is if they're from the Furniture Salvation Squad." Zane strode out of the room, along the hall and down the stairs, with Ty trailing along behind. They parted company at the bottom, Zane making for the door, Ty heading into the kitchen, no doubt to find a bag of peas or some ice.

The bell rang again.

"Yeah, yeah, keep your goddamn hair on," Zane muttered. He twisted the lock and pulled the door open, ready to politely tell the person or people on the stoop to ever-so-kindly fuck the fuck off.

Except the other person wasn't a Mormon on a mission—it was a pair of local cops.

"Afternoon, sir," the older and more serious of the two officers said.

"Afternoon, officers," Zane replied. "Something I can help you with today?"

"We're hoping so, yeah. We just had a call from one of your neighbours, says he's been hearing some thumping and shouting, he's worried about a domestic assault?"

Zane let out a tiny groan. The new guy next door, who'd moved in last week. "It's fine, officers, really," he said, flashing his calmest and most charming smile. "We just had a bit of a disagreement about a domestic matter, might have let the volume get a bit out of control."

The older cop nodded, but narrowed his eyes, not quite convinced. "So, there is another person in the house?"

"My husband, yeah."

Eyebrows shot up. "Your husband?"

Zane's tone turned flat. "That's right. My husband."

"Would you mind if we had a quick word with him, sir? Just so we can see he's okay for ourselves?"

As if on cue, Ty materialized at Zane's side, holding a bag of frozen peas to his head. "Evening officers," he calmly said. "There a problem here?"

The cop's eyes flitted from Zane to the peas, then back to Zane to give him a slightly accusing stare. "Evening, sir, I was just telling your, uh, _husband_ here that we've had a report about some noise, concerns it might be a domestic assault."

"Someone thinks I'm beating you up," Zane explained. "Using you as a punching bag, or throwing you down a flight of stairs."

Ty snorted and shook his head. "Tell whoever called it in we're really sorry about the noise, but there's nothing to worry about. The only thing we're beating up is the piece of Ikea furniture we bought last week."

The younger cop groaned. "Oh, man, makes you wanna just _kill_ yourself, right? Should've seen me four months ago, after our baby girl was born, trying to assemble a stupid crib. Worst goddamn day of my life."

"You sure that's all there is to it, sir?" the older cop asked, ignoring his partner, still not convinced. "If you're only putting furniture together, how'd you get that bump on your head?"

"I tripped and banged it on the wall," Ty said.

"You tripped and banged it on the wall," the cop flatly repeated. He turned to Zane, his features set in a stony glare. "Sir, would you mind if we speak to your husband alone for a minute? Standard procedure, you understand. No reason to be alarmed."

Zane felt his patience fading. "No problem. Talk to him as much as you want. I'll be in the kitchen if anyone needs me." He turned away, scowling at Ty as he passed, making it clear the disgruntled cop was now his husband's problem to solve.

He grabbed his cigarettes from the table and headed to the rear of the house. He briefly considered putting on a fresh pot of coffee, but quickly set the idea aside. After two hours of bickering with Ty about how to assemble that goddamn dresser, caffeine was the last thing his blood pressure needed.

He heard some chatter, the front door being closed, Ty appeared a few seconds later.

"All good?" Zane asked. "You didn't wait until I was gone then burst into tears and beg them to save you from another beating?"

Ty smirked, still holding the bag of peas to his head. "Not this time, no."

"Did he give you the card with all the local contact numbers?"

Ty showed him the card, wedged between his index and middle fingers. "And the speech about how there are agencies in town who can help." He used a magnet to fasten the card to the fridge, next to a photo of them in a café in France and a freeplay-winning lottery ticket.

Zane jerked a thumb at the wall. "We obviously need to go meet our new neighbour," he said. "Let him see what normal, respectable people we are, ask him not to call the cops every time one of us shouts at the other."

"If h e doesn't like it when we argue, wait until he hears us fucking."

"He moved in more than a week ago. Pretty sure he already has."

Ty snorted, then winced.

"How's the head?" Zane asked. Ty pulled the peas away, Zane reached up to trace his fingers around and across the bump. "You feeling okay?" he asked. "Not dizzy or nauseated?"

"Hurts like hell, but it's just a bump," Ty said. "Don't think I need a hospital trip."

"What about the balls? They need a bedside visit from Doctor Garrett?"

Ty huffed and rolled his eyes. "It's a good thing you're so pretty, Lone Star. Cus if you had to rely on just your flirting technique to get yourself laid, you'd be a very single and lonely man."

"So, your balls _don't_ need a bedside visit from Doctor Garrett?"

"Did I say that?"

"No, but…"

Ty held up a deflecting hand. "You remember what I told you a couple of months ago, when you asked me if I wanted to join you in the shower?"

"You said if you ever refuse an offer like that, I should take the AR-15 out of the locker in the garage and shoot you in the back of the head."

"Exactly."

"So, this is the same? Your balls are _always_ ready for Doctor Garrett's special bedside exam?"

"Yup."

"Good to know."

"That's what I thought."

"When do you think you'll need your first appointment?"

"Might not do any harm to give them a quick assessment sometime soon. They _did_ just take a bit of a beating."

"You go upstairs and get really naked, I'll give them the kind of hands-on assessment they'll never forget."

"What, _now_?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, you have something better to do? Would you rather finish building the dresser?"

Ty shook his head. "Now is good." He flashed his brows, then reached out to hook a finger over the rim of Zane's jeans. "But why go all the way upstairs when you can examine them here on a perfectly good kitchen counter instead?"


End file.
